Ethereal Chronicles

In Japanese folklore, Jorogumo is a spider yokai which can take the form of a beautiful human woman to lead men to their doom.

I loved my wife.

Being in her presence was as natural and easy as breathing. She was everything I had ever wanted from a partner, and so much more. But that is not to say she was not, at times, a little strange.

She had grown so attached to the house we lived in, though I longed to sell it. The place was plagued by spiders and dust, no matter how much we cleaned. Cobwebs seemed to sprout overnight, even when I had spent hours dusting the day before. But she would not hear of me selling it. And because I loved her, I let it go.

The attic, in particular, was her favourite place to be. I never understood why; the last time I had been up there, it was empty, dusty, forgotten. She stopped letting me up there after a while, insisted that she wished to make the space her own, and so I obliged, thinking nothing of it.

She sleepwalked at night, sat up in bed to slowly drag herself from the warmth of the covers. Her bare feet would pad softly against the floor as she wandered, sometimes for hours, but I thought nothing of it. She would always return, curling back into bed, snuggling close to me as though nothing had happened.

Each morning, she seemed more beautiful than the last, and not just because I was in love with her. It was something unnatural, something more than just what I saw. She never took breakfast. In fact, food rarely touched her lips at all. If she did eat, I hardly saw it. Looking back at it, I never noticed any of the things she did. I was too busy being utterly enamoured by her. Again, strange.

I suppose, as the months passed, things became more noticeable. She grew more careless, perhaps because she knew how much I loved her, how much I couldn’t let go. She began disappearing for longer stretches during the night. More often than not, I heard her slip from the house entirely. Sometimes she would not return to bed at all. 

I was too afraid to question it, to question her, so I left it alone. Pretended it wasn’t happening.

That is, until one night.

I awoke in the early hours of the morning, when the air was still quiet and still, and suffocating. I reached out for her side of the bed even though I knew that she was already gone. The sheets were empty and cold, starved of the warmth of her body. Thirsty, I decided to get some water. As I crawled out of bed and stepped out blindly into the hallway, I heard the sound for the first time; a faint scratching sound, coming from just above me.

I dismissed it and went downstairs. I briefly checking each room, clinging to the small remnants of hope that she was just trapped in sleep again, and would come back to bed soon. But each room was empty, my wife nowhere to be seen.

With a sigh, I filled my glass and gulped down the water, feeling it cool my parched throat. Once I was finished, I set the glass down on the table with a clink, and turned to go back to bed.

As I climbed back up the stairs, the scratching grew louder, more insistent. I glanced up again. The only place above me was the attic, but I knew she wouldn’t be up there at this time. Not anymore, at least.

So I got back into bed. I didn’t sleep, simply lay there staring at the ceiling, feeling my chest tighten with pain. She could be anywhere. Doing anything. 

I sat up again, rubbing my face with shaking hands. As I did so, the scratching sound started again, so loudly it sounded as though it were coming from the very walls around me. It felt close, too close, too wrong.

For the first time in three years, I decided to check the attic.

The door to the attic was opposite the bedroom. The moment I opened it, the scratching sound bled into the hall.

I stepped inside, and immediately the air that hit me was thick, heavy with something unnatural. It was an odor I could not place; something putrid, like rot.

I moved forward, praying that the old stairs would not give me away. The further I went, the stronger the smell became. At the top, I paused, peering through the banister, dreading what I might find.

Hanging from the beams of the ceiling were five bodies. The corpses were shrunken, their skin taut and grey against their skulls without a drop of blood remaining. Venom dripped from the puncture wounds in their necks and dribbled down their arms, leaving a viscous trail on the floor beneath them.

But worse of all was the thing that sat in the middle of the room. At first glance it looked like some monstrous shape, hunched and contorted, but upon further speculation I noticed the large, twitching legs protruding from its fat body. And when I realised what it was, my blood ran cold.

Perhaps spiders can sense fear in humans, because the instant my body began to tremble, it shifted.

I thought I would come to face multiple black eyes and clicking pincers, but to my horror I found myself looking at my wife. Her head had fused hideously with the beast, her face horribly stretched and merged in place of the spider’s features. It looked…painful. Agonising even. The skin at the edges of her face had been torn, blood mingling with the coarse fuzz of the creature’s body. Her mouth hung open, dripping with blood and spittle, and a mad smile curled her lips.

Two of her eight legs were curled around a sixth body wrapped tightly in webbing. It was evidently more fresh, as blood streamed down its form, pooling onto the floor.

When her eyes rested on mine, however, her expression changed. I saw a flicker of humanity pass through her eyes, and in that moment, she recognised me. She dropped the body, and scuttled, horrified to the corner of the room. A shrill scream hissed from her, so sharp and high pitched I thought my ears might burst.

I watched as the spider contorted with rage, writhing and smashing against the beams with its legs. The bodies swayed dangerously with the force of her movements.

“You know what I have to do now.” She hissed, tears streaming from her eyes. “God, why could you not have just left it alone?”

“I didn’t know.” I whispered, my voice breaking. “I can forget it, if you want. I won’t speak of this again. I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

She shook her head, her hideous body heaving and shuddering. “No.” She said softly, her eyes growing dim, less human.

In the next few moments, I knew they were my last. Because once the last ounce of humanity left her, the humanity that my love had kept alive before I had betrayed her wishes, she lunged for me. I screamed, attempting to flee, but her legs were faster, and larger, and within seconds she had me entangled in her grasp. The rough fuzziness of her legs suffocated me as she wound me in her vile webbing, dribbling her venom over me so that I could not struggle.

She strung me up next to the others, suspending my body as though I were nothing more than a meal. But she did not drink from me, as I had thought she would. Instead she pulled away, staring at me with eyes wild and empty yet still filled with love. 

“I’m so sorry.” She whispered, before raising her legs with a final, brutal motion to strike her own face. The sound of her smashing herself apart filled the room, drowning out all other sound.